I'm just back from a screening of Dreamgirls, which I guess is opening in most of the country on Christmas Day. Actually, the movie ended at 9:00 but we had to sit through the end credits, which ran longer than some studio deals I've had.
The cinematography and art direction are great. The performances — especially Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson — are great. The editing, the orchestrations, the mixing...all the technical details are great, and you probably smell the "but" coming so here it is: But I didn't like the movie very much. I know it'll probably take in serious megabucks. It's certainly the one everyone in Hollywood wants to see. (We were supposed to go to a screening last night but it and all the others that had been scheduled were overbooked, and a nice lady at Paramount switched us to tonight and one of several hurriedly-added additional showings. The fact that people in L.A. are eager for it doesn't necessarily mean they'll be storming the cineplexes in Wyoming...but it sure doesn't hurt.)
Why didn't I have a better time? Same reason I didn't like the original musical back in the mid-eighties: Don't like most of the songs, don't care about most of the people. In case you don't know, this is basically the story of Berry Gordy's Motown Records empire and more specifically of Diana Ross and the Supremes, but with the names and some details changed. I might have been interested in a story about how the group went from obscurity to stardom but that all pretty much happens in the first half hour, and it happens via cynical means that have very little to do with them being deserving talents...or even having any musical integrity. The Gordy clone demotes the lead singer with the thrilling voice to backup status, elevates a blander vocalist to sing lead and otherwise takes the guts out of their music...then he bribes a lot of disc jockeys to play their records and otherwise buys their success.
From then on, it's a film about a bunch of successful people squabbling over who's sleeping with who and getting hurt by the machinations of the guy who manipulated their way into stardom in the first place. The spine of the story is what happens with Effie White, who's played by Jennifer Hudson and who's based on the real-life problems of Florence Ballard in fitting in with the Supremes. Ms. Hudson is electric in the role — rarely do you see a screen debut with "Oscar" so boldly written across it — but I'm sorry. I didn't feel for Effie because she was relegated to back-up singer in the group...and for the same reason I never felt sympathy for George Harrison because John and Paul so dominated The Beatles. More interesting to me than Effie was the situation of James "Thunder" Early, played by Eddie Murphy...but that story ends abruptly and you don't see enough of it before it does.
Ultimately, I guess, it's all about the songs. In a movie like this, you want to love them. You need to love them because the superstar singing group has to thrill you with their performances...and I found the songs — most of them, anyway — forgettable. Jennifer Hudson stops the film with "I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," just as Jennifer Holliday stopped the original Broadway show with the same tune. I think it's a phony theatrical moment because the song is shrill and full of pain disproportionate to what's actually been done to the woman singing it. Matter of fact, I think that's the moment the film really lost me for good and here's what's really odd about it. Despite the title and many of the lyrics, this is not a song about a woman who's defiantly refusing to leave. It's about a woman who's not going along; i.e., she's quitting. As many critics of the original musical observed, she sings "I'm not going" and then she goes. And because she goes, her life gets even worse. For me, the whole story just has too many moments of people being self-destructive but acting like they've been victimized. I know people do that all the time but it doesn't make me care what becomes of them.
You may well enjoy this movie and you certainly shouldn't avoid it because of me. A lot of people at the screening loved it and applauded and like I said, I think it'll make a ton o' cash. I hope it does because we need more screen musicals to do well so they'll make more screen musicals. If they do, I'm sure there'll be many that I enjoy more than Dreamgirls.
The New York Times has a pretty good obituary up for Sid Raymond — the fine character actor who, among his many credits, provided the voices for Katnip the Cat and Baby Huey.
Well, it's a pretty good obituary except for the last part where the reporter attempts to quote one of Sid's favorite jokes...
One of his last jokes involved a son sending a prostitute over to his widowed father, in his 90s, still a self-proclaimed ladies' man. She tells him she is his birthday present and will give him whatever he'd like. "I'll take the soup," he says.
Doesn't make any sense. But it might if the obit writer had gotten the set-up right. The prostitute says to the old man, "I'm here to offer you super sex!" And then the old guy replies...
This shouldn't be on YouTube but since I wrote it, I figured it was okay to link to it. The lawyers will get it removed soon but before they do, you can watch a Garfield cartoon I wrote called Video Airlines.
For those of you interested in the details: The voice of Garfield was performed by the late, great Lorenzo Music. Thom Huge provided the voices of Jon and Binky the Clown. Gregg Berger was Odie, the announcers for The Mediocre Movie Matinee and the Spanish language station, and the monster at the end. Neil Ross did the voice of the actor in the movie, the video store clerk and the ushers. Jim Davis, the creator of the Garfield comic strip, read the part of the announcer on Adequate Theater. The song was written by Desiree Goyette and Ed Bogas. And the whole thing was inspired by when I got my first satellite dish and had a devil of a time finding a channel that wasn't showing the Hello, Dolly movie with Barbra Streisand. Here's what resulted...
December 11, 2006
